| 词条 | Jacob Brafman |
| 释义 |
Iakov Aleksandrovich Brafman (1825 – 28 December 1879), commonly known as Jacob Brafman, was a Russian Jew from near Minsk, who became notable for converting first to Lutheranism and then the Russian Orthodox Church. He was a leading polemicist against the kahal (the communal Jewish theocratic government in Russia) and the Talmud. Brafman's works The Local and Universal Jewish Brotherhoods (1868) and The Book of the Kahal (1869) were foundational texts in establishing a theoretical basis to modern anti-Jewish thought in Russia and established a framework for themes later covered in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. BackgroundBrafman was born in 1825 and lived in Kletsk, a shtetl near Minsk in the Pale of Settlement. His father was a rabbi. The Jews had lived in the town since the 16th century, when it was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but had in Brafman's father's lifetime become part of the Russian Empire following the Second Partition of Poland. Brafman grew up in poor conditions and was orphaned at a young age, being raised by relatives. Despite being under age, local agents of the kahal (the communal Jewish government ran by rabbis in the Pale, which dealt with taxation and conscription), placed Brafman on a list of "volunteers" for the Imperial Russian Army. Not being particularly fond of this idea, Brafman fled the reach of the kahal and went to Minsk, where he tried to establish himself as a photographer. Once in Minsk, Brafman converted to Lutheranism for a time, before in 1858 converting to the Russian Orthodox Church. There was a state visit to Minsk in that year by Tsar Alexander II of Russia and Brafman submitted a memorandum on how Jews in Russia should best be proselytized into Orthodox Christianity and educated into "useful" subjects. The dichtomy of useful and useless Jews had been established by Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. Nicholas saw "use" in bourgeois Jews who were willing to assimilate into Russian society and could be utilised in academic and agricultural professions, while seeing as "useless" the poorer adherents of Orthodox Judaism who lived in the shtetls and kept themselves apart from wider society. Brafman's writing was sent to St. Petersburg and subsequently earned him the chair of Hebrew Studies at the Russian Orthodox Seminary in Minsk in 1860.[1] Brafman vs. the KahalBrafman moved to Vilna in 1866 and began writing vehemently against the kahal and Jewish organisations more generally. Brafman, who had his own personal conflict with the kahal as a young man, argued that the kahal existed as a tyranny against individual Jews, while also being a system which enabled the exploitation of their non-Jewish neighbours.{{sfn|Webman|2012|p=60}} He argued that the mentality of the kahal was the main barrier to Jewish assimilation. Brafman worked on studying Jewish community books of the kahal from Minsk from the years 1794 and 1833, with his own commentary added to try and prove his thesis; at the same time the Rabbinical Seminary of Vilna was providing their own Russian translation. Brafman published his findings as The Book of the Kahal: Materials for the Study of the Jewish Life (1869). Brafman joined the Imperial Russian Geographical Society in 1870 and became a respected figure in academia.[1] One of the main problems with Brafman's thesis was that the kahal system itself in the Russian Empire had been dissolved under Nicholas I in 1844.[1] For Brafman he posited a conspiracy theory that the kahal in fact continued to exist as a secret shadow government among Jews, with reactionary rabbis working to keep control over the "average Jew" and to undermine Christian business interests at the same time. Brafman's works chimed well with the Slavophiles then active in Russia and the political theory of Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality, which sought to distance Russian civilisation from French and British liberalism. Brafman's other major work, The Local and Universal Jewish Brotherhoods (1868), took aim at international Jewish organisations, particularly those based in France. His main object for criticism was the Alliance Israélite Universelle under prominent freemason, Adolphe Crémieux.{{sfn|Webman|2012|p=60}} For Brafman this was the "kahal of kahals" and as part of an international Jewish conspiracy controlled the other kahals.{{sfn|Webman|2012|p=60}} He saw this as the successor of the Grand Sanhedrin (Napoleon Bonaparte's Rabbinic Assembly of 1807).[1] InfluenceBrafman also took aim at the Talmud, claiming that the Jews, using Talmudic principles, would exclude adherents of other religions from trade and industry and themselves accumulate all capital and landed property.{{sfn|Webman|2012|p=60}}[1] Brafman's works, which included the idea of a secret Jewish shadow government and the aspects of an internationally orchestrated "conspiracy" against all Christian nations, crossing over with masonic involvement, provided an essential framework for what would become The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, authored by agents of the Okhrana at the turn of the 20th century.{{sfn|Webman|2012|p=60}} Brafman was particularly well received by conservative Slavophiles in Russia. Vsevolod Krestovskii, one of the most widely read Russian writers of the day, was inspired by Brafman to write a trilogy of novels; The Darkness of Egypt, Tamara Bendavid and The Triumph of Baal.{{sfn|Webman|2012|p=61}} For Krestovskii, the "kahal of kahals" in Paris, with a network of Jewish spies was used to back up British-French militarism against Russia, causing defeat in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) of the Great Eastern Crisis (British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in particular is singled out as an "arch-villain").{{sfn|Webman|2012|p=61}} Hal Draper, an American Trotskyist, in his book Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution claimed that Mikhail Bakunin, one of the Russian founding figures of anarchism, was likely inspired by Brafman's writings on Jews.{{sfn|Draper|1989|p=296}} In the case of Bakunin, in a letter written in December 1871, he made the claim that Jews were a "collective parasite", and claimed that "this world is presently, at the disposal of Marx on the one hand and the Rothschilds on the other," putting a conspiratorial spin on this theme as part of his rivalry with the Marxian socialists in the First International.{{sfn|Draper|1989|p=296}} FamilyOne of Brafman's great-grandchildren was Vladislav Khodasevich, the Russian literary critic. Works
See also{{Portal|Russia|Judaism}}
References1. ^1 2 3 4 {{cite news|url=http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Brafman_Iakov_Aleksandrovich|publisher=YIVO Encyclopedia|title=Brafman, Iakov Aleksandrovich|date=2010}} Bibliography{{refbegin|2}}
10 : 1825 births|1879 deaths|Christian anti-Judaism|Converts to Eastern Orthodoxy from Protestantism|Converts to Lutheranism from Judaism|Judaism-related controversies|Judaic studies|People from Minsk|Protocols of the Elders of Zion|Russian Jews |
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